Friday, 1 May 2020

AJRI Writes The Supreme Court & High Courts on Judicial Reforms Via Information and Communication Technology


To,                                                                                       14/09/2017
                         Hon’ble Justice Dipak Misra,
                          Hon’ble Chief Justice of India,
                              Supreme Court of India,
                                      New Delhi
Subject:  Easy and Feasible Judicial Reforms through National Policy and Action Plan for ICT in the Indian Judiciary. 
  Reference to the subject mentioned above, we on the behalf of our trust the Association for Judicial Reforms, India (AJRI), want to humbly submit the following submissions for kind consideration of lordship for enhancing public faith and trust on fairness and independency of Judiciary;                                                                                                      
1.    That our Trust, Association for Judicial Reforms ,India (AJRI) is working for the cause of Judicial Reforms by suggesting practical ways to all the stakeholders of Justice Delivery System based on public experiences and analytical legal researches.
2.    That as our Trust believes that evolution of present Judicial system within its jurisdictions is the best suited methodology to bring judicial reforms in India, we at AJRI work for documenting the public experiences of litigants/lawyers and synergize these with analytical researches carried out by our researchers, to suggest only those practical ways which if implemented as per present Constitutional/Statutory provisions could bring valuable reforms in present Judicial system.
3.    That public faith and trust on fairness and independency of Judiciary   guarantees the equitable and sustainable development of the society, absence/deterioration of which erodes the natural rights of all the citizens of democratically ruled societies like India, where as per National Judicial Data Grid statistics on September 15, 2017, the total 2,56,34,165 numbers of cases are pending in various district courts, means thereby that at least 15 Crore citizens always remain in judicial loop in India (an average of  three person per case).
4.    That on the basis of experiences of litigants and Advocates, including all stake holders of Justice Delivery system duly documented by our analytical researches on “National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the Indian Judiciary” warrants urgent improvisation for enhancing public faith and trust on fairness and independency of Judiciary.
5.    That majority of litigants and even their lawyers shared that fruits of National Policy and Action Plan for ICT in Judiciary have not been reached to them as aimed through this Citizens’ Centric Mission because of fragmentation and miscommunication amongst its implementing agencies which have become hurdles in achieving desired aim.
6.    That the first advantage which commoner should get from this mission is that, he should get the message regarding his next date of hearing on his mobile phone as an SMS but this simple feature has not become reality for Indian litigants till date even after passage of after twelve long years of implementation of this Mission since 2005 in back ground reality that as per the latest report of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India which says that the Wireless Tele-density India in the month July 2017 was 92.0 3% and the Urban Wireless Tele-density reported 168.21%, as compare to Rural Wireless Tele-density of 57.04 % during the same period.
7.    That as per analytical research synchronized with ground reports gathered by our research team, clearly suggests that even the second largest stake holder of Indian Judicial System, i.e. the advocates practicing in various district courts have also not been fully benefited through National Policy and Action Plan for ICT in Judiciary after investing huge budget in creating ICT Infrastructure and hiring large number of human resource to run the ICT tools and techniques, as the simplest ICT linked reform like messaging to them regarding the next date of hearing of the cases is still a dream.
8.    That the above mentioned situation have arisen because of lack of ground level demands driven actions to utilize the available infrastructures and human resources, adding to this, the non-synchronization between technical minds and judicial minds also creating hurdles in  achieving the common objective, as result of which, the common man is still waiting for availing the slightest form of the Judicial reforms, like SMS service even after passage of twelve long years of this mission, our research team has worked on it and would like to suggest your Lordship that with simple result oriented solution we may bring some happiness on the face of the common man who is interacting with Indian Judicial system.
 9. That the above mentioned SMS service to the all litigants and their counsels can be made practical in District Courts by making e-Court Performa compulsory along with manual filling in District Courts, in that Performa mobile number or e-mail address of the litigants and advocates may be made mandatory, which is not a difficult feature to implement, as per our ground research team report, the Data Entry Operator in district courts, who enters data into e-courts data base from district court has to find the mobile Number and e-mail address of the advocate manually from each and every file, which is a lengthy process and thus he easily omits to do so to save his time, whereas, he never finds the mobile number and e-mail address of the litigant  in the file on record, instead this if Data Entry Operator be provide one page e-filing proforma for every new case than he does not requires to open each and every file manually, thus would make adding mobile numbers and e-mail addresses of the litigant/advocates easy for him and rest of work would be automatically performed by computer itself.
10. That as your lordship knows that the amendment of Order-V of Code of Civil Procedure through which the services of summons may be transmitted through fax message or electronic mail service but the same has not been become reality in district courts as well as in the High Courts, as presently there is no such proforma where e-mail address of the litigants or their advocates is recorded while filing case in Courts, thus the solution to this also lies in the suggestion that we have as humbly submitted in Para 9 of this letter, if implemented would bring reforms visualized by our legislature while amending order-V of Code of Civil Procedure.
11. That apart from above mentioned submissions. It is brought to your kind notice that e-courts websites in India have not been working properly for more than two months when our technical team tried to know the reasons behind this, the truth which came out that, it is only because of not using existing ICT infrastructure properly, same can be verified by looking into monitoring mechanism reports of e-courts projects.    
       Keeping in view Vast Mobile subscribers base in India  and our above mentioned submissions of Linking Mobile with Justice delivery system making it as an integral ICT Tool in e-Courts Projects may kindly be considered as this easy and feasible act not only reduce miscommunication between advocates and litigants regarding hearing dates of their cases but also may be used in spreading legal Literacy among citizens in future, in case suggestive measure are positively implemented in the interest of fairness an independency of Indian Judiciary, assistance from our side is always at the disposal of one of fairest and independent justice delivery systems in prevailing world.
                               Dinesh Singh Rawat                    Mrs. Jatinder Kaur
                                             Trustee                       Managing Trustee
Copies to All Hon’ble Chief Justice of High Courts with humble request for considering of submissions made in our communication in the interest of Justice.
                              Dinesh Singh Rawat                    Mrs. Jatinder Kaur
                                              Trustee                       Managing Trustee

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